Donald Trump efforting to divert attention away from the Russia collusion investigation and his utter lack of any manner of policy success is not at all a surprise.

But the Republican Party allowing itself to be a part of the latest distraction – the nonsensical Fake News Awards?

That’s just plain dumb.

Seems the GOP has forgotten that there are midterm elections coming up this fall, and has somehow erased the month-old memory of a Republican somehow losing a Senate seat in Alabama that Democrats didn’t even contest three years ago.

Even a day ago, Republicans lost a State Senate special election in a Wisconsin district that the GOP candidate had won by 23 points way back in 2016.

Here in Virginia, the political winds turned so badly on Republicans that House districts gerrymandered to give the GOP a 66-34 advantage turned into a 51-49 split in the November general elections, with Democratic candidates getting 55 percent of the votes cast in the House races statewide.

You add it all up, and the Trump brand is, to borrow from the president’s favorite term these days, a shithole.

Curious that the national party would allow its machinery to be used to play to the increasingly fragile Trump base of white supremacists, misogynists, conspiracy theorists and Russian Twitter bots.

The Trump train, you see, has already left the station, and is well on its way to the impeachment and removal of its standard-bearer from office before the 2020 cycle.

The 2018 midterms should be the Republican Party’s focus now. The party can preserve a sliver of its reputation among the more than two-thirds of Americans who regret at every opportunity their role in letting this wretched Trump America come into being.

Keep playing President Chester Cheetah’s dumb reindeer games, though, and you’re risking going the way of the Whigs.